Talk:The Dominion War Sourcebook: The Fires of Armageddon
So this isn't a licensed source? Page should go too then, yup? --8of5 03:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :Oh dear, oh dear. This really leaves us in the shit then, do you know how many articles are based off information from this sourcebook. Articles which have other sourcing will be fine, but a lot of the Starfleet vessels and Dominion War battles are from the sourcebook. Oh dear, Oh dear. --Vote Saxon 07:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :Before we start mass deletions, I'm gonna start to move the information over to the STEU, they take unlicensed fan work, so at least our work won't go to waste. --Vote Saxon 07:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::Yeah, we have a lot of this. Is there an organized way to remove it? I started by undoing some of User:Enzo Aquarius's edits last night (most of his contribs have been from this book), before realizing that it would take a long time, and possibly not be considered the nicest thing in the world by Enzo. :::Mayhaps this page deletion should be voted upon, as unlicensed Last Unicorn RPG's seem popular, since they have an air of near-legitimacy... and are free. I would just hate to see somebody else come along and say, "Hey these guys are missing all the info from these great LUG works! Let me fix that!" -- Data Noh 13:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC) As I suggested for the "USS Enterprise Officer's Manual" on it's deletion page, it might be worth having this page be a redirect to a sources which arn't sources page to avoid that kind of thing. And a note on the Last Unicorn page explaining what is and isn't an acceptable source. -- 8of5 15:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :Well, since this was commissioned as a licensed work, does this give us wiggle room as to keeping it? I mean, it was a perfectly fine example of a RPG sourcebook that was official, until the date of publication came around and it was cancelled (but then released for free by the authors) :Does anyone else think this establishes a case for keeping it and treating it as a valid source? -- Captain MKB 16:20, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::Not really, if it wasn't officially published then it wasn't official published, seems pretty clearly defined to me. It would be no different than including information from a game that never quite got done or a comic, there was a fully scripted gold key comic that never got published, so we don't cover it. --8of5 16:25, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::I'd like to see what other users say as this is a touchy topic that will require some work to correct, no matter what we decide. :::over on the MA canon side of things there was a decision that deleted scenes could be accepted, as they are later released on DVDs and the like. This seems to be our own version of that same issue, I'm pointing out that for the sake of inclusiveness, a lot of this data could be kept. The Gold Key book would be different because it was never released in any form, but the RPG manual definitely was created and edited as a licensed work. -- Captain MKB 16:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC) Not really sure I can add much to support the inclusion of the Sourcebook since it was never published but I do agree that its quite a lot of work to get rid of and personally I quite like the material written in it but thats hardly grounds for including it in Memory Beta. Mind you, one word of caution would be that if this does get included it might set a precedent for other non-published material to get added like the unpublished work of the author of the Sky Pirates of Orion page which says that the Vulcanoid Rigellians are another Vulcan species that splintered or the Secrets of Vulcan Fury game material being added etc etc. Either way, I don't think its any easy decision to make here. -- User Darth Batrus 17:36, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :The script for the comic can be found here in a pdf, just as available as this sourcebook. We have an Unpublished works page, so some are less developed than others, they were all officially developed, under licence, edited, written, etc all for paramount, but that doesn’t make them any more valid sources, because they didn't get published. At best the data from this book could be treated as apocrypha, in the same way MA treats non-canon works.--8of5 16:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::I disagree, I think it's any easy decision to make after reading our inclusion policy. Deleted scenes are slightly validated by the fact that they are included on DVD's which bear Paramount's name. I think it would be different if these sourcebooks were in any sort of valid way published, but they weren't. A subculture may have accepted them, but people flock to fan fiction, too. There is also a huge issue of quality control since these sourcebooks are released as PDF files on fan-made websites. I could edit these myself and post them on a site; would that make my edits in any way valid? -- Data Noh 16:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::Wrong choice of words on my part there. By difficult decision, I kind of meant that it was a lot of material added from that Sourcebook. I haven't done any reversion and stuff so not sure how long it would take to remove all reference of that material from the wiki. -- User Darth Batrus 17:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::::I have no problem going through and cleaning it out, although some of my attempts to do so have already been undone by an admin, so I'd like to at least get this resolved before editing wars take place. -- Data Noh 16:49, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::I'd like to see what the original contributors of this material think also, so I restored it. -- Captain MKB 17:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::I understand and support that. -- Data Noh 17:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::unpublished works were created under Paramount licensees and editors, so the burden of proof here becomes the question of whether it was "disallowed" for some reason, or "superceded" for some reason. I feel that in this instance, the lack of commercial release is a side effect of the cancellation of the license, but there was still a widespread release of material created under license. Unpublished comics and stories, such as Gold Key #62 and Secrets of Vulcan Fury were never released in a complete format, and therefore aren't the subject of what I'm trying to say, and other fan fiction stories mentioned were never licensed, so are therefore not part of this discussion. this is very much a unique case. -- Captain MKB 17:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::Unless there is evidence that this work was licensed, this whole discussion is somewhat moot. There is none; the sourcebooks themselves say that the Trek license is "used without permission," not "used with permission for non-profit release" or "created with permission." Also, as I mentioned above, there does not seem to be any proof anywhere of how much these PDF documents resemble the works, as were, when they actually had the license. -- Data Noh 17:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::::There is definitely proof that this work was licensed. Last Unicorn Games released a large number of Star Trek RPG materials under license, and The DW Sourcebook was written as part of the ongoing series, but Paramount gave the license over to Decipher before the last handful of books were published. Since Decipher was made the primary seller, Last Unicorn had no options but the release the work for free. But it was prepared as a licensed product. -- Captain MKB 17:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::No offense, but that lacks the weight of proof, as it does not cite an official source. I'm willing to take your word on it, but it still in no way negates the possibility that the work was altered after Paramount dropped the license. -- Data Noh 17:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :::I cannot see how that is any different from any other unpublished work then, they were all licensed for development, it doesn’t matter how close they got if the licence was removed before they were published then they are not licensed publications. --8of5 17:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC) From Captainmike's talk page: Even though they were released for free, online, there weare a publication of a company, Last Unicorn Games. It was determined that even though they were not allowed to sell their materials that used Star Trek's trademarks, they were allowed to give them away for free. But the materials were still a product of the Last Unicorn Games company. Unpublished Gold Key comics were never released as a product of that publisher, unreleased video games were never released as a product of the company that made them, but the Last Unicorn Games role-playing materials were officially released by the company that commissioned their creation. -- Captain MKB 18:11, 28 April 2007 (UTC) :So Last Unicorn decided to release them for free, that's very nice, but it doesn’t make them official Star Trek products. Also that was in discussion about what Memory Alpha has done on this, they list all the unpublished ones, quite reasonable, but they don’t even have individual pages for those books yet we are to have that and use the material from them to add to hundreds of in-universe articles?? -- 8of5 18:54, 28 April 2007 (UTC) ::It doesn't matter when it was written, if it wasn't published under license, then it's not licensed, and it's outside of our "turf". The LUG page can link to the unpublished articles, but they can't be used for source material here.--Emperorkalan 03:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC) Since perhaps we have covered and re-covered the main points here, can this be put to a vote somehow? Not just whether or not to delete this page, but the validity of the source? -- Data Noh 02:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC) :Would those in support of keeping this page and using the content of the book as a valid source consider a compromise of making the content from the book valid as apocryphal data but not mixed in with full licensed works? In the same way Memory Alpha included non-canon information in an apocrypha section at the bottom of subject pages. --8of5 07:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC) ::Just as a technical point, that won't be practical for a lot of ship and fleet entries, where the cite by the sourcebook is the entire reason the page exists. (Once or twice before I've grumbled about pages whose sole datapoint was being on some list in an RPG sourcebook. I'll do so again (even if that and two bucks will just buy me a subway ride)--Emperorkalan 11:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Validity Yes or no, for the validity of this source. *'No'--Emperorkalan 03:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'No'--03:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'No' -- Data Noh 04:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Valid' -- Captain MKB 15:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Yes' --Vote Saxon 02:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC) *'Yes' -- Cmdr Ljungberg 02:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC) *'No'--Seventy 12:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Fate of page Keep, delete, or Redirect to an "Unaccepted sources" page *'Redirect'--Emperorkalan 03:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Redirect'--8of5 03:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Redirect' -- Data Noh 04:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Keep' -- Captain MKB 15:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC) *'Keep' --Vote Saxon 02:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC) *'Keep' --Cmdr Ljungberg 02:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC) *'Delete'--Seventy 12:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC) Vote discussion I'm assuming redirects take up very little space, and we can have thousands of them with no detriment to our server capacity. -- Data Noh 04:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC) :It has been a week since the last vote, time to call it?--8of5 06:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC) ::Unfortunately yes, despite a narrow margin, I believe all people concerned with this has had their say. I would move though, that before we delete all the related information and articles, we move them over to the STEU, like I started to do, so that our work is not completely wasted. --Dr. John Smith 06:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC) :::Agreed, I also don't think it would hurt, as I suggested above, that as much as possible is saved as apocryphal, on the pages but not integrated into the properly licensed stuff the same way MA covered non-canon stuff. --8of5 07:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC) ::::I'll second that agreement. (I know I'' certainly have no intention of going on some willy-nilly deletion binge.) A methodical changeover is the best way of tackling something like this.--Emperorkalan 10:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC) ::::::Awww... but willy-nilly deletion binges are ''fun. -- Data Noh 14:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC) :::::Sounds like a plan then. Although I've already added a couple of ships to the STEU database, I know they accept RPG stuff, so that shouldn't be a problem, so I'll inform them of what is happening. Don't want to freak them out with a mass dump of data (-: --Dr. John Smith 10:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC) :::Yes, they get very upset when those outside their core group edit the wiki, tread carefully.. -- Captain MKB 15:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC) Deletions Just noticing what I feared would be the initial "BS" factor of weeding out this data.. Many articles from this reference have been created containing only information from the reference -- however, they ar not appropriate for immediate removal because they have additional sources. If you find an article that only comes from the DW sourcebook, please mark it for a standard deletion discussion, in order to give interested archivists a means to 1) identify the articles that need refurbishment and B) give them the time to find valid sources. I realized this when going over the Starfleet 16th Fleet article -- off the top of my head, I assumed it would be deleted because i couldn't remember any appearances of the 16th other than the DW sourcebook -- however I found the fleet was also mentioned in .. so wht i'm saying is, weed out the DW data but give some of these other articles a chance to live so that we can re-source them without having to delete them and recreate them later. -- Captain MKB 00:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC) :Fair enough. I'll let the rest of you take care of this, for the meantime then. --Dr. John Smith 00:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC) ::I made a special template to mark those articles who's only source is this. If the data transfer to STEU goes ahead I suggest making another template so articles which have been moved can be identified from those which haven’t and once the move as happened I think there should be a time limit on how long these articles are aloud to hang about waiting for another source to turn up. --8of5 03:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC) :::I would say once the move has happened, these pages should be deleted. -- Data Noh 15:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC) ::yes, i believe that was the point of my comment above. -- Captain MKB 19:11, 10 May 2007 (UTC) :::Then there is no need for a template to mark articles that have been moved, right? -- Data Noh 02:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)